Review Detail

This edit is listed as a "FanFix", which assumes it is correcting problems with either the Theatrical Cut of the film or the Director's Cut. To be honest, you could easily just label it a "FanMix", as it largely is simply picking and choosing the best elements of both. The biggest difference will be for those who are nostalgic for '80s synth scores in their Fantasy films: in that case, this is an alternative viewing experience.

Personally, I always thought Tangerine Dream (and the other '80s rock ballads) were an odd fit for this movie, and Goldsmith's score is wonderful, so this is a non-issue. However, you already have that in the DC and European versions of the movie. What this edit does though is to trim out some of the humor and adjust the pacing while giving you the most satisfying ending of the 3 filmed.

My thoughts on the film in general are here- https://boxd.it/50J2gF but I have to say that I think for almost everyone this edit will be a shelf replacer. There are a couple little bits I miss, like the dinner scene between Lili and Darkness or the shot of Darkness drifting into space, but overall I can see why they are not included in this edit. On the technical side, all the replacements are incredibly smooth, with potentially just one or two noticeable cuts early in the film (which is already kind of a narrative mess anyway.)

I'll echo a previous reviewer and say that the opening crawl bugs me and is totally unnecessary, but really that gets into a different realm, in terms of what further improvements could be made to the movie. I do wonder if the beginning couldn't be helped through some more creative rearrangement and re-editing of the various footage, as there's no version where it's not jarring and a bit hard to follow. But that's another question, and not what this edit seeks to do. This already is superior to any available cut of the film, so I have to thank zrfarnsworth for that!